Gearswaps are dead - long live the Jobswaps!

[Tsukino]

Well gear swaps were simply awesome, and revolutionary in terms of having great itemization in an MMO. It is very unfortunate they have gone away.

Think you're probably in the minority there.

It was sort of a neat idea at the start, to swap in a single piece of equipment that was useful for a specific ability. But what most people take issue with is the way it became about having multiple entire sets of equipment for specific abilities. Having to change out your entire outfit and your jewelry to cast a single spell, and being expected to hold all of those things on your person for every job was outright ridiculous. And then things got even worse with third-party tools that allowed you to really change every piece instantly, resulting in combinations that weren't even designed to be possible like Fast Cast at the beginning of a spell to make it cast faster and then other equipment by the end to make it do more damage or stick better.

In the end, it may make highly specialized equipment more useful for a longer period of time, but it completely negates any sense of item balance and trade-offs in stats.

[Tibian]

If the OP really has information that has been said from SE interview/knowledge then this is a huge blow to the accessibility of the game.

One of the many masochistic reasons why a lot of people were turned off in XI is because of the ridiculous requirements for party mechanics.

If I have to level specific classes to enable jobs specifically for a dungeon I don't want to play. I don't enjoy tanking and I don't ever want to have to level one.

Same problem as xxx/Ninja from XI. This is incredibly unfortunate if this comes to fruition.

[Platinumstorm]

I'm not sure what this article is from, or if its even official, however I don't think class swaps are the kind of direction the game needs.

Players don't want to be forced to spend months to level multiple classes.

With that said you shouldn't have class/job locks in a dungeon, after all, that's counter-intuitive to the armory system, but a player should not have to take more than one class to max rank to enjoy the game's content.

[MartaDemireux]

People are confusing classes with jobs it seems. Maybe the article was talking about in the future when more than one job is released per class that you can gain a benefit from swapping your job around (like a DD Monk to a stealthy Thief for PGL or something).

[Rhomagus]

I think a lot of people are blaming SE when they should be either blaming other players or themselves here. I can see both sides though.

Let's say you like to solo, and you like to solo your melee class. That's cool I totally understand that, but wouldn't you like to have the ability to solo that class more efficiently? Wouldn't having access to Conjurer specific spells help you with that? Or do you think that one class should just have access to everything so that you could effectively solo it? I prefer the multiclass system personally. It allows for personalization while giving someone the adaptability for party play. As of right now, you don't need to level multiple classes to fifty to get anything done. While I haven't seen it, I'm confident you don't even need to bring a single class to fifty to experience all the non leveling content there is to offer. Crafters can attempt synths 10 levels above their current rank and the minimum requirement for admission to Darkhold is 45. I would agree with people if needing multiple classes at fifty to finish anything were the case but it's not. The argument is a slippery slope based on XI's community. It may be extremely advantageous to do so, but that's fine. Let it be. Min/Maxers have their place here too. Doesn't mean we can't all play on the same playground.

A lot of comments are presupposing that the community will start "forcing" people to do certain things that they might not want to do. The Armoury gives you the ability to solo effectively if that's what you want. It also gives you the ability to party effectively, if that's what you want. The community, which can't be blamed (yet), is responsible for deciding the social atmosphere and minimum expectations of other players. Even in FFXI you could gain merit points on your Level 75 RDM/30WHM. Unfortunately, that community would shun you for being ineffective and inefficient. You were then "forced", by the community, to level that subjob to 36 before anyone from the community would waste their time with you. That community was too stringent when it came to player expectations. Their stringent behavior was reinforced by XI's design though. With experience loss on death and needing a group to get anything done socialism became the norm. On the contrary, as I will show, XIV is designed differently.

I remember a situation in XI where someone dinged 74 in a party and the leader kicked them for having a 35 subjob. The Armoury gets rid of people being able to "see" your "subjob" and fortunately, players aren't asking nor requiring certain abilities for forming groups (they are petitioning for SE to do this on the forums though). SE does need to fix the party search function but that's a different topic. The community is asking for classes, which I think is pretty asinine when it comes to SP, but whatever.

Anyways, the game is designed from a freedom of choice perspective:

• Limited on time but want to get a little SP and money without needing a group? Awesome! Grab some leves and alter their difficulty to suit your level of play.
  
• Want to grind for hours on end with other people? Sweet! Get a group of 4 or 8 together, read up on Battle Regimens and slice and dice your way to fifty. (Search function fixes would help streamline this.)
  
• Want to gain SP in a dungeon while simultaneously getting drops that are rank appropriate, negating the need to acquire currency to properly gear yourself? Excellent! Run Toto-Rak or Darkhold with a rank 25 or rank 45 class respectively and kill two birds with one stone.
  
• Want to play the economy, not fight monsters, and still experience the main storyline? Super! Level a crafting class and use the item search function in between synthing by the repair NPC and fixing other people's equipment to 100%.

So let's look at how the community is currently forcing people to play:

• Limited on time but want to get a little SP and money without needing a group? Awesome! Grab some leves and alter their difficulty to suit your level of play. (You can still do this, as the community can't force what you do with solo content. Pre patch 1.18 may have made you feel guilty for not using those Dunesfolk for Dinner leves with other people but that's not SE's fault.)
  
• Want to fight monsters that require strategy and a group effort? Too bad? Unless you have a couple rank 50's because no one's going to waste their time if they can just 4 shot the mob. Oh, and make sure you have at least 6 other 50's so they can just bust that out for you. What? No linkshell? Too bad, so sad.
  
• Want to grind for hours on end with other people? Okay, as long as we have a GLD two ARCs and at least one CON we're down but if there's no tank (anything can tank sp mobs btw) we're going to do something else. Besides, we're too busy shouting in Ul'dah not using the party search function (which actually does need to be fixed) to form a group anyways.
  
• Want to gain SP in a dungeon while simultaneously getting drops that are rank appropriate negating the need to acquire currency to properly gear yourself? {Dzemael Darkhold}3/8 LFM: R50 GLD, R45-50 ARC, ARC, CON, THM. The three are MRD, LNC, and PUG.
  
• Want to play the economy, not fight monsters, and still experience the main storyline? Sorry? The community demanded that crafting classes shouldn't be able to experience the storyline by themselves. That's ridiculous, now go make us some arrows and switch to CON for a Darkhold run.

The worst part is, some of those behaviors aren't even efficient to begin with. It creates a lazy playerbase, (*cough cough* R50s in Toto-Rak/Open world NMs *cough*), discourages crafting (leading to inflation), and segregates our precious real life time by activity (no combination of grind and dungeon/NM). The only person it serves well are people that don't use their time wisely by multitasking. The game is designed so that you could potentially grind dungeons and get normal item drops to either sell or use for ranking a crafting class. The community, being mainly XI based, hasn't caught on to that nor will they likely do so. Game designers generally tend to create a game to be accessible to the masses, but the breadth of its experience is not realized unless you play on the highest difficulty. Patch 1.18 has offered that general design mantra. Honestly though, I wouldn't be surprised if the community moved to get rid of SP in dungeons and limit the amount of crafts a person could take to cap regardless.

But here's the thing...

They haven't, and we are the community. The community consists of you and I. Be "us" when you want to and let others be "them" when they want to and know when it's appropriate to switch those titles and I think we'll all get a better game to play.

[Lumidus]

I change classes in the dungeons. MRD > ARC for boss fights

[DoctorMog]

That was the biggest load of crap...

Nobody is forcing anyone to do anything. Yes some class combos are better than others, but who said you HAVE to do them?

Its the same way in EVERY. SINGLE. GAME. EVER.

I would pick apart your post, but its pointless. You are thinking about everything too much. YES archer and CON is currently the strongest combo, but it evens out later on when you have more skills to choose from. I promise.

The dungeon and ALL content is doable by a party with no archers or nukers and one healer.

People would rather COMPLAIN about how good archer and conjurer are against CURRENT game mechanics than figure out how to make good use of the other classes.

This is going to cause a nerf to classes that don't necessarily deserve it simply because lazy people can't be bothered to take the time and figure out how/where to use the rest of the classes.

Lazy people... seriously...


Get on your lancer and DON'T STAND IN THE FIRE.

[zaviermhigo]

They aren't even nerfing conj or archer anymore due to lnc and mrd. They already said they were going to change mrd/lnc/pug, instead of gimping other classes. Smart people don't legimitly complain because "oh now conj is OP" we complain because they were trying to balance the game and some people see an utter disregard in terms of balance now (not saying i'm one of them) How are they lazy at all when LNC and MRD aren't good classes period no matter how you cut it compared to other classes. LNC and MRD can do the dungeons but not effectively, and why would anybody bring someone in a dungeon that isn't effective? This is a product of mobs and classes. SE does an awful job at balancing, they always have. No one is against a few classes being slightly better, but in an mmo with limited battle classes, people should be alarmed that two classes are almost useless.

I also blame this on them not making range that important, what happened to "you can't hit what you can't reach" if you don't know what I'm talking about then go read the FFXIV website made my SE that should be taken down because it hasn't been updated is filled with unimplemented things and is pretty much a lie to what the game is. If lnc's distance mattered I don't believe we'd have some of these same problems with them, vit doesn't stack well with lnc in point allotment I believe because lnc was supposed to keep at maximum polearm distance. (which you can't do in this game because a] abilities and such push you forward and b] once they took collision detection off mobs, it meant mobs now fight entirely too close and sometimes attack inside of your body, which I think is annoying and retarded looking)

But who knows, I bet the original concepts of the main website weren't even show to yoshi-p, since no one told him what this game was supposed to be when he took over, and now they have to pull stuff out of their ass for things already created. This pisses me off to no end, there are some things that were advertised for ffxiv in the past that people were pretty pumped for, and now I think there's little to no hope of getting them unless there's a dedicated person going "hey this crap was advertised and we think we should do it" but if beastmen coin and the ebisu event are any indication, that distance chart on the main xiv website will never mean anything.


and where she quotes the article being from is very legitimate, since its the famitsu blog for ffxiv. LOL everyone always acting like people just make up shit on random websites about xiv since its such a popular game

[Kailea_Nagisa]

it is not a combat mechanic, since you have to be in passive mode and not in combat to change your job.

That and the whole point of the class system in this game it to do what you seem to have a problem with.

When the current healer in my group goes down, I would like to have a backup.

[Preypacer]

The idea of swapping jobs in the field was sort of the WHOLE POINT of the armory system. Being allowed to maximize your potential and being rewarded for having more than one job makes a great deal of sense with that under consideration.

The OP's issue with swapping jobs is 'blinking' because of gear. Frankly I'm not sure why we blink any more. Almost every other MMO has gotten around what ever technology limitation it is that forces the model to be hidden while a piece of gear is swapped.

SE focused so heavily on graphics and then missed details like that for some reason. And whats more they were in the BEST POSITION TO FIX IT with their own engine this time around.

Well, you also still can't alt-tab out of FFXIV in full-screen mode, and the game is still fussy even in windowed mode.

This is after years of the same restriction in XI, until SE finally implemented a native windowed mode into the game after enough complaining. Yet, here we are back at square one with XIV.

This is something pretty much every other Windows game (with very few exceptions) has never had a problem with... yet SE can't seem to "grasp" it.

So, it doesn't really surprise me at all that they haven't "caught on" to the idea that gear can be swapped without your character having to disappear and reappear each time.

Heck, how about being able to swap out skills in your hotbars more quickly? Why is that process so slow? I can't quite grasp that one either.

SE seems to make a lot of their decisions in a vacuum.